OK, let's leave psychiatric diagnoses out of it for a moment. Let's simply consider dangerous people who have done violent and destructive things.

We charge such people with a crime, and convict them, and sentence them. Should their sentences be finite? Is it fair to the rest of us for them to get out a few years later and have the freedom to hurt people again? Maybe not, and, if not, the remedy involves changes to the legal system, perhaps laws that say sentences must be served out and not shortened.

Now, about the "criminally insane" thing. In essence, violent people avoid prosecution for their crimes by being found legally insane. The definition of the kind of "insane" that gets you off the hook for violent things that you did is NOT the "dangerous to self or others" standard that is used (wrongly and unConstitutionally, in my opinion) to commit people to involuntary treatment -- think about it! If it were the same standard, any person with a psychiatric diagnosis (or capable of obtaining one after the fact) would be unprosecutable for violent crimes, since they would by definition be "dangerous"! Instead, the standard is "incapable of knowing right from wrong".

OK, if we agree that these are the folks we are talking about--NOT people who have a history of being convicted of violent crimes who also happen to have psychiatric diagnoses, but people who have been judged to lack the ability to discern right from wrong--then I have no primary objection to the recommendation that such people SHOULD NOT BE RELEASED from psychiatric incarceration at some later point and pronounced "cured". I'm not necessarily in favor of that, but I'm not necessarily opposed to it either.

The question there is: Is it possible that at one point in time someone (as an adult, presumably) could be so incompetent as to be unable to discern right from wrong, and yet later on be cognizant of such things and therefore able to take responsibility for their own behavior? And, if so, should they be held responsible for what they had done previously, or does behavior from that prior period "not count"?

But for Joe Blow, who happens to have a psychiatric history and happens to have a violent criminal history as well, but who is not incompetent and has not been judged to be unable to determine the different between right and wrong -- this person can be held responsible in a court of law for his actions, and should not be locked up except in accordance with the same laws that would apply to anyone else.

 

Original SDMB thread - Dear Sister, please take your lithium

See my previous post on this same thread

 

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